Day 16 - Wet, Wet, Wet (I feel it in my toes)

Essentially this day consists of rain, wind, getting lost and the first complaints of my wheel.

Rain: It rained, and it rained alot. Thankfully, we've become so use to it that there is no problem with rain anymore as long as we are wearing our waterproofs. Unfortunately we both lack sufficient waterproofs for our hands and feet, and especially my feet. I was sporting my wonderful, wonderful binbag socks again - they had worked so well last time it would have been silly not to. However my selective memory had forgotten to warn me that the binbag socks had not really been tested in rainy weather properly. It turns out that if you wear plastic bags over your feet, it does keep your socks dry but also creates a reverse wet-suit and causes your feet to freeze - and they did freeze. It got to the point where I couldn´t pedal efficiently because I couldn't feel my toes at all. Eventually we had to stop for a bit so I could warm my feet by - taking them out of my shoes and warming them in the cold air. After today I'm never using these again.

Wind: Actually it wasn't that windy, but there were several bits where the gusts were capable of throwing us from our bikes. However we were on good clean country roads, which leads me to:

Getting Lost: It didn't really add much to the journey, but it still did not make me happy. We were taking some smaller roads and Danny was leading the way. Had it not been raining and the sun had been shining, we would have been fine, however I was not in a good mood what with the bad weather and with no idea where we were I was very nervous about the whole day. Our destination was Chateauponsac, where the campsite is open all year (no problems there), which wasn't to far from Montmorillon, so the day wasn't going to be too hard. Which was good because it was a sunday, and things are hard to get hold of on a sunday. However, the trip just seemed to take so long in the wet feet and the wet back wheel...

Back Wheel: It seems that even with getting the bikeshop in Tours to re-grease my back wheel it still gets into difficulty in the wet. As we were travelling down this muddy road, after having got ourselves lost (the french do not make it easy sometimes), the wheel started squeaking quite badly, and vibrating the bike frame as well. It did not feel healthy at all. I was getting really worried about it, and wanted to get to the campsite as quickly as possible. However the region we were entering took on a completely different terrain from what we were used to, which also seemed to change the entire culture as well. It reminded me of the Lake District; dark stone, small rivers pouring into large ones, thick woodland. I noticed that this land changed the building materials of the buildings and it all seemed very different from the Normandy and Loire regions we had been through. Still very french though.

The Campsite and Town sat perched upon the top of a great hill overlooking a beautiful river valley (and in a few days time we would realise just how beautiful the river valleys could be in this region). When we reached the campsite, the reception was shut but we were intercepted by a friendly and helpful old French man (who was 86), and with my broken french he was able to communicate to me that the reception would open at 8am tomorrow morning and that the showerblock was shut, but that we were to use the restaurant toilets. I had a great time trying to explain to him where we had travelled and I think he understood some of it. My French was definately getting better.